Archive-It K12 Explorer

Archive-It K-12 Explorer

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

If you were a K12 student which websites would you want to save for future generations? What would you want people to look at 50 or even 500 years from now?
These questions are central to the K12 Web Archiving Program, a partnership between the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress. Now in its third year, with 14 schools in 13 states around the country, this innovative program provides a new perspective on saving history and culture, allowing students to actively participate and make decisions about what "at risk" website content will be saved. The decisions they make help them to develop an awareness of how the Web content they choose will become primary sources for future historians studying our lives. The program teaches critical thinking, collaboration and problem solving - essential life skills that students need today in order to be successful.
The program uses Archive-It, a web archiving service, to capture born digital content from the Web to create collection "time capsules." Students decide the type of collections and the specific websites to be captured, attaching a brief description to every one so that people in the future will know why they chose this content.